Send me email updates about messages I've received on the site and the latest news from The CafeMom Team.
By signing up, you certify that you are female and accept the Terms of Service and have read the
Privacy Policy.

GOP ignores children once they're outside the womb..

G.O.P. IGNORES CHILDREN ONCE THEY'RE OUTSIDE THE WOMB

A recent road trip took me into the precincts of rural Georgia and Florida, far away from the traffic jams, boutique coffeehouses and National Public Radio signals that frame my familiar landscape. Along the way, billboards reminded me that I was outside my natural habitat: anti-abortion declarations appeared every 40 or 50 miles.

"Pregnant? Your baby's heart is already beating!" "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. -- God." And, with a photo of an adorable smiling baby, "My heart beat 18 days from conception."

The slogans suggest a stirring compassion for women struggling with an unplanned pregnancy and a deep-seated moral aversion to pregnancy termination. But the morality and compassion have remarkably short attention spans, losing interest in those children once they are outside the womb.

These same stretches of Georgia and Florida, like conservative landscapes all over the country that want to roll back reproductive freedoms, are thick with voters who fight the social safety net that would assist children from less-affluent homes. Head Start, Medicaid and even food stamps are unpopular with those voters.

Through more than 25 years of writing about Roe vs. Wade and the politics that it spawned, I've never been able to wrap my head around the huge gap between anti-abortionists' supposed devotion to fetuses and their animosity toward poor children once they are born. (Catholic theology at least embraces a "whole-life" ethic that works against both abortion and poverty, but Catholic bishops have seemed more upset lately about contraceptives than about the poor.) While many conservative voters explain their anti-abortion views as Bible-based, their Bibles seem to have edited out Jesus' charity toward the less fortunate.

That brain-busting cognitive dissonance is also on full display in Washington, where just last week the GOP-dominated House of Representatives passed a bill that would outlaw all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. After the bill was amended to make exceptions for a woman's health or rape -- if the victim reports the assault within 48 hours -- U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., withdrew his support. The exceptions made the bill too liberal for his politics.

Meanwhile, this same Republican Congress has insisted on cutting one of the nation's premier food-assistance programs: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps. GOP hard-liners amended the farm bill wending its way through the legislative process to cut $2 billion from food stamps because, they believe, it now feeds too many people. Subsidies to big-farming operations, meanwhile, remained largely intact.

The proposed food stamp cuts are only one assault on the programs that assist less-fortunate children once they are born. Republicans have also trained their sights on Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. Paul Ryan, the GOP's relentless budget-cutter, wants to turn Medicaid into a block grant to the states, which almost certainly means that fewer people would be served. About half of Medicaid's beneficiaries are children.

The Pain-Capable Unborn Protection Act, whose name implies more medical knowledge than its proponents actually have, has no chance of becoming law since it won't pass the Senate. Its ban onabortion after 20 weeks, passed by the House along partisan lines, was merely another gratuitous provocation designed to satisfy a conservative base that never tires of attacks on women's reproductive freedom.

Outside Washington, however, attempts to limit access to abortion are gaining ground. From Alaska to Alabama, GOP-dominated legislatures are doing everything they can think of to curtail a woman's right to choose. According to NARAL Pro-Choice America, 14 states have enacted new restrictions on abortion this year.

That re-energized activism around reproductive rights slams the door on recent advice from Republican strategists who want their party to highlight issues that might draw a broader array of voters. Among other things, they have gently -- or stridently, depending on the setting -- advised Republican elected officials to downplay contentious social issues and focus on job creation, broad economic revival and income inequality. Clearly, those Republican lawmakers haven't gotten the message.

Still, GOP bigwigs get furious when they are accused of conducting a war on women. But what else is it? It's clearly not a great moral crusade to save children.

(Cynthia Tucker, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a visiting professor at the University of Georgia. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)

Since we live in a nation that very much has some socialist programs (in that we all kinda pitch in to take care of each other) all children benefit from tax payer money. We all do. Public schools, public libraries, the roads, the food we eat is subsidized by the government. A lot of what we enjoy everyday came about through public investment.

I get you are talking about social welfare programs. I know. However, every single one of us benefit from programs that are tax payer funded. I am where I am because my grandfather used the GI bill to buy a house after WWII. Because he had property he was placed squarely in the middle class. That leg up led to him having a successful career as a union carpenter. My family is in the middle class because of that.

Point is, no one is an island. We all put in to collectively benefit. We are better off when resources are pooled and then shared.

Quoting skylight555:

I don't care how many children ones have as long as they don't use taxpayers money to pay to raise them. Period.

It's very hard to do that when you don't have access to resources that enable them to be responsible for their children. Personal responsibility is meaningless if the community is not a strong one. No one is an island and we all need help raising children regardless of income or lack thereof.

Quoting JTROX:

It's crazy that they want people to be responsible for their own children!

I know many people who take responsibility for their own families. Of course, life isn't easy, it takes effort. Some aren't willing to put in the effort.

Quoting mehamil1:

It's very hard to do that when you don't have access to resources that enable them to be responsible for their children. Personal responsibility is meaningless if the community is not a strong one. No one is an island and we all need help raising children regardless of income or lack thereof.

Quoting JTROX:

It's crazy that they want people to be responsible for their own children!

I can't speak for lifeforchrist but I've followed her along for awhile now. I think she's one of those few pro life people that does support social welfare programs that help children. They do exist. Crazy, I know. But they do.

I'm pro choice by the way.

Quoting AdrianneHill:And yet you say nothing about the breathing children alive and in need. Do they not deserve your protections and protestations too?

Ready to follow pregnant women around with admonishments for life and offers of assistance but the lives of children whose parents are trying or aren't are deemed just more fodder for the free lunch-prison corridor.

Go on, scream for the right of potential but ignore it in front of you for being poor and a burden on society.

Quoting lifeforchrist:

because being dead and ripped into pieces is the better kinder option. Abortion hypocrites make me gag.

and some people work multiple jobs, earning low wages and still struggle to make ends meet because the gap between the classes is far too large. you can't say that everyone who needs assistance doesn't put forth any effort.

Quoting JTROX:

I know many people who take responsibility for their own families. Of course, life isn't easy, it takes effort. Some aren't willing to put in the effort.

Quoting mehamil1:

It's very hard to do that when you don't have access to resources that enable them to be responsible for their children. Personal responsibility is meaningless if the community is not a strong one. No one is an island and we all need help raising children regardless of income or lack thereof.

Quoting JTROX:

It's crazy that they want people to be responsible for their own children!

and some people work multiple jobs, earning low wages and still struggle to make ends meet because the gap between the classes is far too large. you can't say that everyone who needs assistance doesn't put forth any effort.

Quoting JTROX:

I know many people who take responsibility for their own families. Of course, life isn't easy, it takes effort. Some aren't willing to put in the effort.

Quoting mehamil1:

It's very hard to do that when you don't have access to resources that enable them to be responsible for their children. Personal responsibility is meaningless if the community is not a strong one. No one is an island and we all need help raising children regardless of income or lack thereof.

Quoting JTROX:

It's crazy that they want people to be responsible for their own children!

In relation to abortion, this is generally not a true statement...many countries who have much broader safety nets than the US have lower abortion rates than the US as well...

Quoting garnet83:

What I keep seeing in these posts consistently that no one has addressed is the expectation of government leadership to offer remedy unfortunate circumstances some children are subject to and also the underlying suggestion that the only people who can successfully give a good home to a child are the affluent. Yet there is no call to people to take personal responsibility for their reproductive actions. And its horrible and unthinkable to suggest that anyone suck it up and do whatever is necessary to provide for their child. And there will always be a shortage of personal responsibility as long as there are safety nets.

I have always wondered about the fact that those that are apposed to abortion and say just give the baby up for adoption, do all those people adopt all those unwanted babies? Why are there so many unwanted children in the fostercare system that are adoptable but no one will adopt them? Why are there so many children abused, neglected, starving and have medical issues? What do these supposedly compassionate people want? IMO what they want is for all the children living in poverty to just disappear, for the parents that are working poor to just disappear and stop being a pain in their ass. They want everyone to think, and behave like they do and that will never happen no matter how many laws they pass to make the American people a nation of sheep.

They really don't care if they allow all those children they are wanting to force on people to die because of lack of medical care before and after birth, they don't care if those children starve to death either. Most importantly IMO they really don't care about anyone that is outside not only their political party, but also the income brackett that will pump money into their pockets.

For anyone who is going to ask if I have adopted? Guess what I can't afford the cost to adopt a child that needs it.

Send me email updates about messages I've received on the site and the latest news from The CafeMom Team.
By signing up, you certify that you are female and accept the Terms of Service and have read the
Privacy Policy.